Henry Flint - May I take down your Lenticulars?

Yesterday saw the release of the critically acclaimed Trifecta graphic novel, which has been given a luxurious hardback treatment and a glorious lenticular cover by fan favourite Henry Flint. For some reason, this brain meltingly brilliant book collects Dredd stories 'Bullet to King Four', 'The Cold Deck' and 'Trifecta' as well as the Simping Detective tale 'Jokers to the Right' and Low Life's 'Saudade'. Hmmmm, I wonder why...?

Here is Henry Flint to tell us more about the creation of the books' dazzling lenticular cover: "The brief was to create two images so they could be turned into a lenticular cover. The idea would be to have both Dirty Frank and the Simping Detective reflected in Dredd’s eye visor, switching between the two. The trouble with the visor is that it’s too small and the lenticular effect would be wasted on having such a small area of the cover change. A solution was to distort Dredd’s face with Photoshop to make the visor as big as possible, without it looking too ridiculous."

"The black and white image here is the rough cover before distorting. Notice the mouth is in the slightly wrong place, but is easily fixed."

Old Stony Face himself

"I printed out a copy of the Photoshop distorted Dredd, put it onto the light box and inked a second image. I didn’t want to use the printed distorted image as it looked too obvious it had been played around in Photoshop, re-inking made the distortion more natural. The distorted fish eye lens effect kind of gives the impression Dredd and the others are being scrutinised and under pressure, which fits in well with the story..."

How Dredd looked to Judge Cal's deputy.

"Last of all I played around with the background colours just to get the most out of the expensive cover printing.  Also notice; Dredd’s right visor glint is blinking on and off, almost as if he’s winking."

"Don't be here when we come back!"

I cobbled together the gif below to give an idea of the effect. It's a truly brilliant idea, completely fitting of the story. Of course, it's flawlessly executed by Henry and I have to say I'm a little bit in love with the shading style he's used on Dredd...

Dirty little winker!

Here's how the book looks on your shelf... from a certain point of view!

Huge thanks to Henry for sending the images and commentary. Please be sure to check his brilliant blog at http://henryflint.wordpress.com/. The book is available to buy today, what are you waiting for!?!